The great gender-neutral toilet scandal

All women have been there - desperate for the loo, standing in the queue at the cinema just before the start of a popular film, glaring resentfully at the rapid turnover of the men's. Have you ever thought of nipping in to shake your thing with the boys, or does the thought of those urinals put you off?

In one cinema, things have taken a turn, some might say, for the worse. The annual Lesbian and Gay Film Festival (LGFF), held at the British Film Institute on London's South Bank, has created two gender-neutral toilets: one converted from a staff toilet and one from an existing women's toilet - the busiest one, in fact, in the bar area. Which somehow doesn't seem very fair. (Normally, there are five men's and five women's loos, as well as three unisex disabled ones, throughout the whole building.)

Billy Wizz, one of the LGFF organisers, points out that the festival has a commitment to screening films of interest to the transgender community. "One of our priorities is to work with our audiences to ensure we provide events and facilities that they have requested," he says. But why would transgender folk need a "gender-neutral" loo at a gay film festival, when they would ordinarily use the one prescribed to their chosen gender? And why do women never have enough toilets? Think pubs; think Glastonbury.

Writer and broadcaster Amy Lamé was at the festival at the weekend, and felt angry at the khazi kerfuffle. "In gay clubs, men often think it is OK to barge into women's toilets," she says. "When I was in the gender-neutral loo, I did not feel safe. Any number of pervy men could decide to go in to look at the lesbians."

To make our sanitation system properly gender neutral, women would need to learn how to pee standing up, and men do away with their urinals, always put the seat up, and aim for the basin. But not everyone is convinced. "There are men who would love to see what goes on in the ladies'," says Lamé. "But, trust me, I do not want to see theirs."